“Whether you remember or not, we had a deal, little fury.” He hauled me off the floor by one arm and I hung there, bare, filthy toes brushing the dirty floor. “You can come willingly, or I will take you with as much force as I like. Either way, I will be paid.”
Was this face different? I blinked, struggling to focus through the pain in my shoulder as I dangled. Did I know this face, the way the flames flickered in his black, black eyes and were shown on his crimson lips? Did it matter? I knew his voice, but couldn’t remember how....
“Who are you?” I croaked. For that matter, who was I? Where was I? Why had the pain stopped?
He set me on the ground and laughed, exposing a tongue the color of my own dried blood, and the sound rolled through me, drawing anger from me like bubbles floating toward the water’s surface. “Today, I find myself in the unlikely role of liberator, but this knight gallant does not work for free. You will pay me for my troubles, or I will leave you here to rot for eternity.”
“Pay?” Troubles? Eternity? Were his words supposed to make sense?
“It’s just a kiss, little fury.” He slid one hand behind my head and pulled me closer, and I shoved against his granite chest, fighting unburdened by the rational certainty that I’d break my own bruised arms before I could break his hold. “Shhh, it’s just a kiss.”
His mouth met mine, and my empty stomach churned. Then he sucked my chapped, cracked lower lip into his mouth and his teeth sank into my flesh. I screamed against his lips, and he devoured me whole, blood and outrage as one.
But that wasn’t all he took from me. As he sucked at my mouth, holding me in place in spite of worthless, wordless protest, my pain and fear began to coil up from some unknown depth at my center, swirling through me and into him in a roiling storm of suffering. Fire. Blood. Broken bones. Frozen limbs. Torn flesh. Bruised skin. Skewered hope. Ruined mind. Shredded reality.
I lost the torment infusing each excruciating memory as he sucked them dry, like draining the flavor from a Popsicle of pain, and as he swallowed the madness in each moment, older memories surfaced. Better times. People I loved.
My name.
I am Kaylee. Cavanaugh. I am Kaylee Cavanaugh.
I was Kaylee Cavanaugh, anyway, until the bottom fell out of my world and I tumbled into hell.
He drank from my mouth, drawing things from deep inside me, and with each second my pain and fear faded, leaving only thoughts I’d forgotten I ever had. That, and a deep, scorching anger that burned in me unlike anything I’d ever felt.
I put myself here. I’d done this to myself. For one long moment, I couldn’t move past that outrageous certainty. Why had I done this to myself? Why would I submit to such suffering?
When much of the pain and fear were gone, he got his first taste of the fury and self-loathing raging inside me, and he took it all, bit by bitter bit.
Then I remembered his name.
Ira. Evil, but useful.
Ira licked the cut he’d opened inside my lip, and...
* * *
“You want me to play nursemaid and courier?” His black, black eyes mock me. “That is a perverse sort of role-play indeed, my twisted little instigator.”
I roll my eyes. “I want you to protect them and deliver a letter.” My blood spells out his name on the cafeteria floor. It still pools in my palm, and I hope it will not dry before we are done negotiating. “This letter.” I pull the folded envelope from my pocket, and blood streaks the front of it.
His brows rise in obvious curiosity. “What could you possibly offer, little flame, that is worth the performance of such insulting tasks?” He’s interested. I can feel it. I can see it.
“Madness. The profit of pain and anger.” I close my eyes, trying not to imagine it. “I guarantee that if you protect them while I’m gone and deliver this letter at the appropriate time, when you come for me, you will find the most dense concentration of agony and rage you’ve ever experienced. I’ll be a human bonbon with a bitter raging center. I’ll be insane with suffering. Completely out of my mind. And it’s all yours. Every single flame of fury surging through my veins. Every drop of pain I’ve been drowning in. Every mad thought jumping around in my head. They are all yours, if you do this for me.”
* * *
He sucked on my lip, encouraging the flow of my blood, and rage washed through me into him. I didn’t try to fight it. I let it go, because this was what I’d agreed to and because with every bit of anger he took, he gave back one of my memories.
Answers.
The long-forgotten promises that put me there...
* * *
“Why would Avari let you go?” Ira’s black, black eyes flash in the pale moonlight shining into the cafeteria.
“He won’t have any choice once he realizes he doesn’t really own my soul. He can’t own it if it wasn’t mine to surrender in the first place, so if the rightful owner comes to claim it, he has to turn it over. Right?”
Ira’s brows rise. “If it wasn’t yours, then you couldn’t rightfully give it to him, and he couldn’t rightfully accept it. So, yes, if the rightful owner demands its return, Avari would have to relinquish your soul.”
“But because he did take possession of it, his promise to me has to stand, right?”
“The wording of such a promise is critical, but yes.” Ira nods slowly, and his dark, dark lips curl up in a smile. “You are a clever one, little fury. But tell me, why would your soul not be yours to surrender?”
“Because I already gave it to someone else....”
* * *
My own blood filled my mouth as fast as it flowed into his, and dimly I was aware that I couldn’t have much more to lose. But that probably didn’t matter. I was dead, right?
* * *
“So then, there’s only the matter of duration. How long will you suffer for them? For me?” Ira’s blood-smile broadens in anticipation of my answer.
As little as possible, of course. “A week.” I say it as firmly as I can, because surely a week in hell is enough for anyone to endure, but he laughs in my face, and the sound is like glass shattering as it’s hurled against stone.
“A decade. I won’t work without the promise of a hefty profit. By which, of course, I mean your pain and anger. The hellion’s fury will be substantial, but you must suffer to make this creative venture worth my time, little fury.”
But we’re arguing about my time. My suffering. And I can’t do a decade. There wouldn’t be enough of me left to rescue.
“A year. You’ll be paid more than you can possibly imagine, and you’ll continue to collect from Avari for years,” I point out. “Decades, maybe.” If a hellion’s memory is infinite, who knows how long he can hold a grudge?
“Little flame, I have quite a capable imagination, as does your hellion of avarice. But if I am to protect your loved ones on your behalf, you must suffer on mine. For years. That is how this works.”
My heart races in panic. This will fall apart if I can’t secure Ira’s help. My father will die. He will suffer for eternity because I couldn’t save him. My friends will be hunted, one by one.
I have no choice. “Fine. Three years. As measured in the human world.” I can already feel the promised years slipping away from me, and I am terrified of what my time in hell will bring.
“Five. Not a day less.”
“Four, and you can feed from them, too.” A last-minute stroke of brilliance on my part. “While you protect my friends and family, you can have their anger. Their grief for me. Take it. Feed from it in my absence.” A reciprocal relationship that would surely benefit everyone.
Ira thinks for several minutes, staring at me until my skin begins to crawl in discomfort. Have I messed this up? Have I forgotten something?
Then, finally, he nods. “Shall we seal it with a kiss?”
“If I must. But there’s one more thing. I need you to make me forget about this. Take the memory of our bargain, so Avari can’t find it.”
“That
will be my pleasure, my little roaring flame....”
* * *
When he pulled away, the world stopped spinning so fast that I almost fell over. I blinked. I licked the inside of my lip and tasted my own blood. Then I looked down at the dingy scrap of linen—maybe white, once—wrapped loosely around me like a towel.
I was dirty and bruised, but not scarred and no thinner than when I’d arrived. Avari must have just put me back together, intending to rip me apart all over again.
I glanced at the filthy room around me, and I almost asked how long I’d been there. Was it four years to the day? The memories felt numerous enough to fill a century, though they were eerily hollow now, without the pain and anger he’d drained from them.
It worked. I hardly dared to believe it. What if this was part of the torture—what if Avari was letting me believe I was free, only to pull me back into hell, where I would suffer anew? He’d certainly done it before.
My toes curled in the dirt on the floor. “Is it over?” I looked up at Ira and found him smiling the smile of the thoroughly intoxicated. He was drunk on my pain and fury. On the insanity he’d slurped from my soul, leaving me only the bits I could handle.
So far, so good.
“Ira, is it over?” Candlelight flickered over the scrap of my clothing, and he finally looked down at me.
“Almost, little flame. Your knight has arrived.”
“You’re not my knight.” Please say you’re not my knight....
“No, that was a temporary role, and one that has never fit me well. Knights appear to work for honor, a concept I’m not sure I even fully understand. I work for profit.”
Of course he did. He was a hellion, and hellions were evil. He hadn’t helped me—he’d performed services in exchange for payment. Years worth of payment. Could it really have been only four? It felt like eternity....
“Your knight is fairer than I, and less powerful, but much more determined on his mission. Did I mention that he’s here?”
He’s here. Tod had come to say the words I’d left for him. Words he’d had no way of understanding until Ira delivered my second letter to him. Until he’d read—in my handwriting—that Levi had lied, and that I wasn’t gone.
I stood up straight and buried the memories, ignoring the desperate impatience nipping at the edges of my miserable existence. “Let’s go.”
The hellion held his hand out, and I took it. A second later, we stood in another room, so fast I had no time to process the change. This room was larger, and populated with dozens of terrifying species I didn’t quite recognize, but didn’t find unfamiliar, either. Had I seen them during my torture?
My bare feet were silent on the dusty stone floor. Linen whispered against my skin as I moved. Avari’s voice was like needles shoved through my ears and into my brain.
“Just because I cannot hurt you does not mean that no one in the Nether will. I cannot decide if you are flaunting courage or idiocy today, reaper.”
Reaper!
My heart jolted back to life when I saw him, standing alone among monsters, feet spread, fists clenched. His curls were golden like pure sunlight, which had surely never shone in the Netherworld. He looked the same. Like time had stood still around him while it had stretched monstrously around me.
“Neither. I’m flaunting words.” Tod’s voice touched places inside me that had not felt kindness in...longer than I could even comprehend. I had to bite my tongue to keep from calling out to him through the crowd. My hands itched to touch him. My mouth longed for a taste of him. But I couldn’t let Avari see me until the formalities were over. Until he knew he was bound by his own word to let me go. “Specifically, the ones she said to you.”
“Which words were those?” Avari demanded, and I could tell that he wasn’t yet angry, because he didn’t know what was coming. “She’s screamed and moaned a great many things to me over the years, though few of them have been coherent of late.”
Tod stiffened, livid with indignation on my behalf, and I wanted to cry out and tell him I was okay. Because he didn’t know. He didn’t know what had happened to me, or what state I was in, or whether I would ever again be the girl who’d kissed him in the school hallway, scandalizing everyone around us with what now seemed like such an innocent expression of attraction.
Ira stood in the background with me, practically buzzing with anticipation of the rage destined to glut him.
“My soul is yours,” Tod said, and the words burned through me. I remembered saying them, just like that. Just like I’d practiced. Just like I’d written...
“Yes? And?” Avari was losing patience, and surely soon he’d realize I was no longer suffering. That my pain was no longer feeding him.
“Her soul wasn’t her own to give, which means she had no right to surrender it to you or to anyone else. You had no right to accept it.” He stood straighter, confident and bold in spite of the monsters restlessly milling around him. “You can’t keep her.”
“Nonsense!” Avari roared, and Ira’s hand tightened around mine. He practically swelled, lapping up the anger Avari had started to exude like sweat from hellion pores. “Who else would own her soul?”
“I would.” Tod’s voice was strong. Clear. “Her soul is mine, and I have proof, written in her own hand.” He pulled a folded envelope from his back pocket, and even from a distance I recognized his name, in my handwriting. It was my first letter to him—the one I’d left for him the night Levi had told his lie. Tod opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper that had obviously been folded and unfolded so many times it was nearly falling apart. Then he read from it.
“‘I am yours, body, mind, heart, and soul. And I always will be.’” Tod looked up, and Avari’s eyes narrowed until they were slits leaking darkness into the Netherworld night. “See? She is mine, body, mind, heart, and soul. And if she’s mine, she can’t be yours. Let. Her. Go.”
The demand was a formality. Avari had no choice but to stand by his word. To break it would mean rendering his promise to me a lie, and if I was sure of anything about hellions it was this: they cannot lie.
I knew I was free even before he opened his mouth, but the bellow of rage that he unleashed upon the Netherworld at large was more than confirmation. For a moment, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but cover my ears, trying to protect my brain from the sonic assault.
Ira spread his arms, like a child bathing in sunlight, and began to laugh. The sound of his joy swallowed Avari’s rage like a sponge soaking up water.
Avari’s mouth closed, and his eyes narrowed. Even without pupils, I could tell when his gaze found us. “You!” he thundered, and Ira laughed some more.
“Kaylee!” Tod shouted. He tried to run to me, but monsters poured into the path between us.
“It has been my pleasure to conspire with the young bean sidhe to provoke your wrath, an emotion certain to feed me for centuries to come, as you watch her live on, beyond your grasp.” Joy dripped from Ira’s voice. “Now, return her soul, and let the fun begin!”
Avari roared again, and again I covered my ears. His fists were clenched, and his featureless eyes glowed like black lights, gleaming in fury. He lifted one arm, and for a moment I was afraid his gesture was calling me closer for yet another demon kiss. Instead, he opened his hand and twisted it, curling his fingers in my direction, and something deep within me unfurled. It felt like a snake uncoiling in my stomach, a great, frozen serpent, chilling me from the inside out.
Avari jerked his hand back, and that serpentine coldness—his own breath—was ripped up through my core and out my mouth with a metaphysical brutality that made me gasp. For a single second, my insides were a gaping vacuum, sucking at the world—at eternity—in search of something substantial. Something to support my existence and anchor it to the physical reality of my resurrected body.
Then he held up his other hand, but I couldn’t clearly see what it held. I could no longer clearly see anything. Sight and sound were
already fading as I faded, for the lack of a soul. I collapsed to my knees, but didn’t feel the impact.
“Do it!” Tod shouted, and distantly I registered the panic in his voice.
A second later, a blast of something light and warm hit me. It surrounded me like a blanket molded to the shape of my body, then sank into me. Through me.
I didn’t realize how cold I’d been on the inside until the warmth of my own returned soul brought me back to myself for the first time in four interminable years. I gasped, sucking in one great breath, and the Netherworld came into focus around me. Creatures eyeing me like Sabine would eye a hamburger. Avari, simmering with rage eager to bubble up and over him.
And Tod...
Tod pushed his way through the inhuman crowd toward me, trying to see if it was over. If my soul was indeed restored. If I was back.
And I was back.
“Little fury, our business is complete,” Ira said from my left. “I’ve already guaranteed your safe passage to the human world, as part of our agreement, and I suggest you leave now, before you find yourself in trouble you cannot bargain your way out of.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice.
I raced across the room, and what remained of the crowd split for me. Tod’s eyes widened and filled with tears. His arms opened. My letter fluttered to the ground. I threw myself at him—arms around his neck, legs around his waist—and the moment we touched, fog rolled up from the floor and over us.
The Netherworld faded, and Avari’s bellow of fury faded with it.
The school basement came into focus around us, and I exhaled like I hadn’t had a breath to release in years. And in truth, I hadn’t.
Tod’s arms tightened around me as he lowered us to the floor, my limbs still wrapped around him. Tears poured down my face as I clutched him, feeling the muscles shift beneath his shirt as I ran my hands over his back. He felt so solid. So real. His features didn’t shift into monstrous shapes with each change of temperament. His teeth didn’t bite. His touch didn’t hurt.
I slid my fingers into his hair, and his curls were the softest thing I’d ever felt. He smelled so good—so sweet and clean—and he felt so good, so I kissed my way down his jaw until I found his mouth, then I kissed him. And kissed him. And kissed him some more. And finally I had to make myself stop before I devoured him whole, because I was starving, and he was the first sustenance I’d had in years, and he was exactly the right sustenance, but I would never feed from him like Avari fed from me, and just that thought sent horror rolling through me and...